Home-ownership for future generations

This paper constructs a housing market model to analyse conditions for different generations of households in the UK. Previous policy work has suggested that baby-boomers have benefitted at the expense of younger generations. The model relies on a form of financial accelerator in which existing homeowners reinvest a proportion of the capital gains on moving home. The model is extended to look at homeownership probabilities. It also explains why an increasing share of mortgages has gone to existing owners, despite market liberalisation and securitisation. In addition, the model contributes to the explanation of volatility.

Urban land and property ownership patterns in the UK: trends and forces for change

The first part of this review examines what is meant by ‘urban land and property’ (ULP) and looks at the background of ULP in the light of trends in UK urban areas over the past 50 years. Key conceptual approaches to the ULP ‘ownership issue’ are identified, together with the constraints to empirical analysis, which include a lack of data and patchy and inconsistent datasets. Three main components of ULP ownership in the UK are then examined using published data on commercial property, residential property and urban land, including ‘previously developed land’ (PDL) and ‘development land, covering both the private and public sectors. The review examines past trends in ULP ownership patterns in these sectors within the UK, and the key drivers which have created the present day patterns of ULP ownership. It concludes by identifying possible future trends in ULP ownership over the next 50 years to 2060 in the three main ULP sectors.

Cooperative housing/ownership

Cooperative housing is a long-established form of housing tenure found in many countries. This article will examine the different definitions and forms of cooperative housing and the different roles it has donned in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom and Sweden. The philosophy behind this form of housing will be described. The pragmatic reasons for its existence, such as the need for a collective form of tenure to deal with common repair problems, will also be discussed. The main areas of research on housing cooperatives will be described: (i) their efficiencies being compared with those of other tenure forms and (ii) identifying the factors that influence resident involvement.

The determination of total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations in freshwaters from land use, stock headage and population data: testing of a model for use in conservation and water quality management

1. Nutrient concentrations (particularly N and P) determine the extent to which water bodies are or may become eutrophic. Direct determination of nutrient content on a wide scale is labour intensive but the main sources of N and P are well known. This paper describes and tests an export coefficient model for prediction of total N and total P from: (i) land use, stock headage and human population; (ii) the export rates of N and P from these sources; and (iii) the river discharge. Such a model might be used to forecast the effects of changes in land use in the future and to hindcast past water quality to establish comparative or baseline states for the monitoring of change. 2. The model has been calibrated against observed data for 1988 and validated against sets of observed data for a sequence of earlier years in ten British catchments varying from uplands through rolling, fertile lowlands to the flat topography of East Anglia. 3. The model predicted total N and total P concentrations with high precision (95% of the variance in observed data explained). It has been used in two forms: the first on a specific catchment basis; the second for a larger natural region which contains the catchment with the assumption that all catchments within that region will be similar. Both models gave similar results with little loss of precision in the latter case. This implies that it will be possible to describe the overall pattern of nutrient export in the UK with only a fraction of the effort needed to carry out the calculations for each individual water body. 4. Comparison between land use, stock headage, population numbers and nutrient export for the ten catchments in the pre-war year of 1931, and for 1970 and 1988 show that there has been a substantial loss of rough grazing to fertilized temporary and permanent grasslands, an increase in the hectarage devoted to arable, consistent increases in the stocking of cattle and sheep and a marked movement of humans to these rural catchments. 5. All of these trends have increased the flows of nutrients with more than a doubling of both total N and total P loads during the period. On average in these rural catchments, stock wastes have been the greatest contributors to both N and P exports, with cultivation the next most important source of N and people of P. Ratios of N to P were high in 1931 and remain little changed so that, in these catchments, phosphorus continues to be the nutrient most likely to control algal crops in standing waters supplied by the rivers studied.

Incorporating technology buying behaviour into UK-based long term domestic stock energy models to provide improved policy analysis

The UK has a target for an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 from a 1990 base. Domestic energy use accounts for around 30% of total emissions. This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing models and modelling techniques and indicates how they might be improved by considering individual buying behaviour. Macro (top-down) and micro (bottom-up) models have been reviewed and analysed. It is found that bottom-up models can project technology diffusion due to their higher resolution. The weakness of existing bottom-up models at capturing individual green technology buying behaviour has been identified. Consequently, Markov chains, neural networks and agent-based modelling are proposed as possible methods to incorporate buying behaviour within a domestic energy forecast model. Among the three methods, agent-based models are found to be the most promising, although a successful agent approach requires large amounts of input data. A prototype agent-based model has been developed and tested, which demonstrates the feasibility of an agent approach. This model shows that an agent-based approach is promising as a means to predict the effectiveness of various policy measures.

Statebuilding and governance: the conundrums of legitimacy and local ownership

The chapter explores the role of legitimacy in statebuilding. It first explores the concept of legitimacy and why it matters for successful statebuilding; it surveys how international statebilding efforts have tried to strengthen the legitimacy of post-conflict states; and examines the practices of local ownership in statebuilding, and how they relate to legitimation efforts.

Apartment ownership: the English version needs reforming

In this contribution, the English commonhold system, which enables the development of freehold units in a multi-unit development, is critically re-visited. Provision is made for the development of freehold apartments on land with a registered commonhold title. At the date of registration, a management body for the scheme, the commonhold association, must be in place. Each purchaser of a unit in the relevant building obtains freehold property on purchase. The property and management of the building housing the units and of the common areas of the scheme are, by contrast, withheld from unit holders and vested in the commonhold association, which is a special kind of body corporate. Since the coming into force of the English legislation, a set of defects have been detected. This contribution re-assesses the main problem areas and makes a number of reform suggestions drawing on material from a number of jurisdictions, notably South Africa, France and Germany. Avoidable problems are likely to arise with any conversions to commonhold from the predominant English long lease system, owing to the narrowness of the conversion rules. The manner in which ownership of units and the common parts are regulated, a key aspect in any such system, merits re-assessment. It seems that here the English rules survive comparison. The rules pertaining to constitution of the commonhold association fail to provide sufficient safeguards for unpaid scheme creditors. The rules relating leasing of commonhold units seem inadequately thought out. There is a conspicuous absence of real remedies for non-payment of assessments by unit holders. The effect of these and other aspects may help to explain why commonhold has had a limited numerical impact. The time for a second generation reforming statute may have come.

Does consumption-wealth ratio signal stock returns? VECM results for Germany

This paper studies the signalling effect of the consumption−wealth ratio (cay) on German stock returns via vector error correction models (VECMs). The effect of cay on U.S. stock returns has been recently confirmed by Lettau and Ludvigson with a two−stage method. In this paper, performance of the VECMs and the two−stage method are compared in both German and U.S. data. It is found that the VECMs are more suitable to study the effect of cay on stock returns than the two−stage method. Using the Conditional−Subset VECM, cay signals real stock returns and excess returns in both data sets significantly. The estimated coefficient on cay for stock returns turns out to be two times greater in U.S. data than in German data. When the two−stage method is used, cay has no significant effect on German stock returns. Besides, it is also found that cay signals German wealth growth and U.S. income growth significantly.

Home, meaning and identity: learning from the English model of shared ownership

This article explores the problematic nature of the label “home ownership” through a case study of the English model of shared ownership, one of the methods used by the UK government to make home ownership affordable. Adopting a legal and socio-legal analysis, the article considers whether shared ownership is capable of fulfilling the aspirations households have for home ownership. To do so, the article considers the financial and nonfinancial meanings attached to home ownership and suggests that the core expectation lies in ownership of the value. The article demonstrates that the rights and responsibilities of shared owners are different in many respects from those of traditional home owners, including their rights as regards ownership of the value. By examining home ownership through the lens of shared ownership the article draws out lessons of broader significance to housing studies. In particular, it is argued that shared ownership shows the limitations of two dichotomies commonly used in housing discourse: that between private and social housing; and the classification of tenure between owner-occupiers and renters. The article concludes that a much more nuanced way of referring to home ownership is required, and that there is a need for a change of expectations amongst consumers as to what sharing ownership means.

The performance effects of composition changes on sector specific stock indices: The case of European listed real estate

This paper examines the impact of changes in the composition of real estate stock indices, considering companies both joining and leaving the indices. Stocks that are newly included not only see a short-term increase in their share price, but trading volumes increase in a permanent fashion following the event. This highlights the importance of indices in not only a benchmarking context but also in enhancing investor awareness and aiding liquidity. By contrast, as anticipated, the share prices of firms removed from indices fall around the time of the index change. The fact that the changes in share prices, either upwards for index inclusions or downwards for deletions, are generally not reversed, would indicate that the movements are not purely due to price pressure, but rather are more consistent with the information content hypothesis. There is no evidence, however, that index changes significantly affect the volatility of price changes or their operating performances as measured by their earnings per share.

The level of compliance with the International Code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes: does it matter to stock markets?

The present paper explores, theoretically, and empirically, whether compliance with the International Code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes impacts on financial performance measured by stock markets. The empirical analysis, which considers a 20-year period, shows that stock markets are indifferent to the level of compliance by manufacturers with the International Code. Two important issues emerge from this result. Based on our finding that financial performance as measured by stock markets cannot explain the level of compliance, the first issue refers to what alternative types of mechanisms drive manufacturers who comply the least with voluntary codes such as the International Code. Conversely, from our finding that stock markets do not reward the most compliant, the second issue raised is an inherent weakness of stock markets to fully incorporate social and environmental values.

Lock, stock, and barrel: a comprehensive assessment of the determinants of terror

We assess the robustness of previous findings on the determinants of terrorism. Using extreme bound analysis, the three most comprehensive terrorism datasets, and focusing on the three most commonly analyzed aspects of terrorist activity, i.e., location, victim, and perpetrator, we re-assess the effect of 65 proposed correlates. Evaluating around 13.4 million regressions, we find 18 variables to be robustly associated with the number of incidents occurring in a given country-year, 15 variables with attacks against citizens from a particular country in a given year, and six variables with attacks perpetrated by citizens of a particular country in a given year.